Interactive Social Book Search Data README

The data is split into three files:

Participant responses - results_cleaned.csv

The participant responses contain all responses that the participants gave to the questions given to them before and after the main tasks.

For the two tested interfaces "baseline" refers to the baseline single-page interface, while "multistage" refers to the multi-stage interface.

For the two tasks "open" refers to the open-ended task ("Imagine you are waiting to meet a friend in a coffee shop or pub or the airport or your office. While waiting, you come across this website and explore it looking for any book that you find interesting, or engaging or relevant..."), while "focused" refers to the more specific task ("Imagine you are looking for some interesting physics and mathematics books for a layperson. You have heard about the Feynman books but you have never really read anything in this area. You would also like to find an 'interesting facts' sort of book on mathematics.").

The fields are in alphabetic order in the CSV file, except for the fields in the General section, which are at the front.

General

Fields containing general information about each participant

participant
The unique participant identifier used to link the questionnaire responses with the log data
interface
The interface the participant used ("baseline" or "multistage")
order
The task order that the participant followed ("open then focused" or "focused then open")
source.institution
The institution who recruited the participant
source.location
The location of the participant: "lab" -- In a lab, "other" -- Somewhere else

Culture and Language

culture.birth
The country of birth
culture.home_language
The language spoken at home at least 50% of the time
culture.mother_tongue
The participant's mother tongue
culture.residence
The country of residence
culture.web_language.*
The languages the participant uses to search the web. This is a set of columns, one for each language at least one participant used. A "1" in the column for a language means they use that language, "NA" means they do not use that language

Country values are: AT - Austria, BD - Bangladesh, BE - Belgium, BG - Bulgaria, BR - Brasil, CN - China, CO - Colombia, CR - Costa Rica, DE - Germany, DK - Denmark, ES - Spain, ET - Ethiopia, FR - France, GB - Great Britain, GR - Greece, HN - Honduras, HU - Hungary, IN - India, IR - Iran, IS - Iceland, IT - Italy, KZ - Kazakhstan, MX - Mexico, MY - Malaysia, NG - Nigeria, NL - Netherlands, NO - Norway, PH - Philippines, PL - Poland, PS -Palestinian Territories , RO - Romania, RU - Russia, SA - Saudi Arabia, SL - Sierra Leone, TR - Turkey, US - United States of America

Language values are: ace - Achinese, akk - Akkadian, af - Afrikaans, am - Amharic, ar - Arabic, bg - Bulgarian, bn - Bengali, ca - Catalan, cpe - English-based Creole or Pidgin, crp - Creole or Pidgin, cs - Czech, da - Danish, de - German, el - Greek, en - English, es - Spanish, fa - Persion (Farsi), fil - Filipino, fr - French, gl - Galician, he - Hebrew, hu - Hungarian, is - Icelandic, it - Italian, ja - Japanese, ko - Korean, ms - Malay, nl - Dutch, no - Norwegian, pl - Polish, pt - Portuguese, ru - Russion, sk - Slovak, sv - Swedish, ta - Tamil, tr - Turkish, uk - Ukrainian, zh - Chinese, zza - Zaza

Demographics

demographis.age

Participant age:

  • 1 -- 18-25
  • 2 -- 26-35
  • 3 -- 36-45
  • 4 -- 46-55
  • 5 -- 56 - 65
  • 6 -- 66+
demographics.education.completed.*

The education levels that the participant has achieved. This is a set of columns, one for each of the following categories:

  • doctorate -- Doctorate
  • further -- Further education / College diploma
  • masters -- Masters
  • professional -- Professional qualification
  • secondary -- High School / Secondary School
  • undergraduate -- Undergraduate

A "1" in any of these columns means that the participant has achieved this level of education, an "NA" indicates that they have not.

demographics.education.current.*

The education level that the participant is currently undertaking ("current"). This is a set of columns, one for each of the following categories:

  • doctorate -- Doctorate
  • further -- Further education / College diploma
  • masters -- Masters
  • professional -- Professional qualification
  • secondary -- High School / Secondary School
  • undergraduate -- Undergraduate

A "1" in any of these columns means that the participant are undertaking this level of education, an "NA" indicates that they have not.

demographics.gender
The participant's gender.
demographics.status
The participant's current economic status: "employed", "student", "unemployed", or "other".

Engagement

The following questions were asked:

  • ae1 -- This website is attractive
  • ae2 -- This website was aethetcially appealing
  • ae3 -- I liked the graphics and images used on this website
  • ae4 -- This website appealed to my visual senses
  • ae5 -- The screen layout of this website was visually pleasing
  • en1 -- Exploring this website was worthwhile
  • en2 -- I consider my experience a success
  • en3 -- This experience did not work out as I had planned
  • en4 -- My exploration experience was rewarding
  • en5 -- I would recommend exploring this website to my friends and family
  • fa1 -- I lost myself in this experience
  • fa2 -- I was so involved in this experience that I lost track of time
  • fa3 -- I blocked out things around me when I was exploring this website
  • fa4 -- When I was exploring, I lost track of the world around me
  • fa5 -- The time I spent exploring just slipped away
  • fa6 -- I was absorbed in exploring
  • fa7 -- During this experience I let myself go
  • fi1 -- I was really drawn into my exploration task
  • fi2 -- I felt involved in this exploration task
  • fi3 -- This exploration experience was fun
  • no1 -- I continued to explore this website out of curiosity
  • no2 -- The content of the website incited my curiosity
  • no3 -- I felt interested in my exploration task
  • pu1 -- I felt frustrated while exploring this website
  • pu2 -- I found this website confusing to use
  • pu3 -- I felt annoyed while visiting this website
  • pu4 -- I felt discouraged while exploring this website
  • pu5 -- Using this website was mentally taxing
  • pu6 -- This experience was demanding
  • pu7 -- I felt in control of my exploration experience
  • pu8 -- I could not do some of the things I needed to do on this website

Post-Task

All responses proviced after the task are either for the "open" and "focused" tasks, specified in the column name. Rating responses use the following coding sequence:

  • unused -- Participant did not use the element
  • 1-5 responses on the scale between 1 -- "Not at all" and 5 -- "Extremely".
post_task.baseline.*.(focused|open)

Assessment of the UI elements on the "baseline" interface. The following UI elements were assessed:

  • bookbag -- The bookbag
  • search_box -- The search box
  • search_facets -- The faceted search interface
  • search_history -- The list of previous searches
  • search_results -- The list of search results
post_task.browse.*.(focused|open)

Assessment of the UI elements on the "Browse" tab (step 1) of the "multistage" interface. The following UI elements were assessed:

  • individual_books -- The list of books for a selected topic
  • topic_explorer -- The hierarchical topic explorer
post_task.search.*.(focused|open)

Assessment of the UI elements on the "Search" tab (step 2) of the "multistage" interface. The following UI elements were assessed:

  • search_box -- The search box
  • search_facets -- The faceted search interface
  • search_history -- The list of previous searches
  • search_results -- The list of search results
  • search_topic -- The search topic selector that carried over the search topic from the "Browse" stage
post_task.bookbag.*.(focused|open)

Assessment of the UI elements on the "Bookbag" tab (step 3) of the "multistage" interface. The following UI elements were assessed:

  • notes -- The input field for storing notes
  • similar_books -- The interface for finding similar books for a book
post_task.meta_data.*.(focused|open)

Assessment of the individual book meta-data on either interface. The following elements were assessed:

  • description -- The description tab, which contained long-text descriptions of the book's content
  • publication -- The publication tab, which contained publication meta-data
  • reviews -- The reviews tab, which contained user-provided reviews
  • tags -- The tags tab, which contained user-provided tags

Task

task.timer.(focused|open)
The amount of time spent on the task in seconds.

Log Data - activity_cleaned.log

The log file contains all interactions between the participant and the search interface.

Fields

participant
The unique participant identifier for linking with the participant responses and bookbag
timestamp
The ISO timestamp of the given log entry
action
The action the user undertook
params
Parameters for the action in url-encoded format

Available actions

start
Start a new session for the given task. Parameters interface and task.
show-layout
Shows the given layout to the user. Available layouts are "baseline" for the baseline interface and "explore", "focus", and "refine" for the multistage interface, and "review"
query
The user ran a query, either manually or by clicking on book meta-data or by selecting a query from the history. Parameter q contains the actual query.
paginate
The user paginated through the results. Parameter start contains the index of the first item to display. If a list parameter is present, then this is the index of the result list on the "explore" page that was paginated.
add-to-bookbag
Add the book with the given id and title parameters to the book-bag.
remove-from-bookbag
Remove the book with the given id parameter from the bookbag
add-facet
Add the facet to the list of facets being used to restrict the result list. The facet parameter holds the facet field, while the value parameter holds the facet value.
remove_facet
Remove the facet from the list of facets. The facet parameter holds the facet field, while the value parameter holds the facet value.
show-item
Show the book with the given id parameter.
metadata
Select the given metadata tab for the book with the id parameter.
mlt
Find more books like this, by searching using the text parameter in the field specified by the field parameter
explore_path
Browse the topic tree branch. Nodes in the branch are separated by "::" and the last node is the current node the user just selected.
annotate-item
Add an annotation note to the book with the id parameter
sort-items
Sort the items in the bookbag into the order specified by the id parameters.

Bookbag Data - bookbag_cleaned.csv

The bookbag data contains all books the participants added to their bookbags in the different tasks. Books that the participants added, but then removed from their bookbags are not contained in this data-set. The books are not in the order that they were added to the bookbag.

Fields

participant
The unique participant identifier for linking with the participant responses and log data
task
The task that the participant was undertaking when they added the book.
book_id
The unique identifier of the book in the data-set
title
The book's title